More Than The Answer
I’m picking up teaching again. This time, my students are my own kids.
My wife used to take care of most of their schoolwork, but as they get closer to high school, I figured it was probably time for me to step in. Some people ask, “Why not just leave it to tutors?” Of course, the language barrier is one reason. But more importantly, I want to pass on some of the learnings I wish someone had taught me when I was their age.
Some of those lessons only came to me as little epiphanies in college—or even much later, after I started working.
And surprisingly, teaching them has been a lot of fun. When we talk about conditional probability, I can show them how the same idea connects to LLMs. When we work through quadratic equations, we can talk about how mathematics connects to kinetics and the physical world. Revisiting these ideas brings back a lot of good memories, and I get to see them again through a different lens.
My wife does occasionally remind me not to go too far. She has a point. Maybe the kids just want to know enough to pass the exam, while Dad wants to show them all the tricks and magic behind it.
We are living in the age of AI, so another obvious question is: why not simply let AI teach them?
The process matters more than the answer.
AI can give them an explanation in seconds. It can solve the equation, explain the concept, and probably come up with better examples than I can. But as a parent, perhaps the best gift I can give them isn’t the answer. It’s my time.
I want to share with them the beauty hidden inside a problem—the subtle trick, the clever shortcut, the unexpected connection. But most importantly, I want to help them develop something that is harder to get from simply knowing the answer: Insight.
Someday, they may forget the equations I taught them. I hope they remember how much fun it can be to understand why something works.
